Bloodhound SSC 1,000-MPH Land Speed Record Attempt To Be Streamed Live

The current world land speed record stands at 763.035 mph, as set in October 1997 by British Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green driving the jet-powered Thrust SSC. Green is looking to break his own record and has a new team and a new car behind him.

The car he plans to use is the Bloodhound SSC, which in addition to a jet engine comes with a rocket-propulsion system that Green hopes will take him to a top speed in excess of 1,000 mph. The team behind the Bloodhound SSC is predicting a speed of 1,050 mph!

Green has now revealed that he’d like to take you along for the ride during his record attempt, which is slated to take place in late 2015. He will do this by streaming the attempt live via the Internet.

A total of 16 cameras will be mounted to the Bloodhound SSC so that nothing will be missed, and Green’s radio conversation will also be included.

A number of Internet companies are expected to work with the Bloodhound team to ensure footage can be streamed live, despite close to a billion viewers expected to tune in for the event. Cisco has already signed up and the team is in talks with Google, Microsoft and YouTube. Other companies to have partnered with the Bloodhound team include Lockheed Martin, Rolex and Rolls-Royce’s aviation arm, which has donated an EJ200 jet engine borrowed from a Eurofighter Typhoon.

Getting anywhere close to 1,000 mph on land will be a monumental achievement. The only other manned vehicles capable of those speeds within Earth’s atmosphere are military fighter jets, although none can do this speed close to the ground where the air is thicker.

Fast jets typically take 10 years to design, with a team of several thousand engineers exploiting vast accumulated knowledge and budgets of tens of billions of dollars. Bloodhound has a team of just 34 and only what funds it can acquire through sponsorship.

Testing of the Bloodhound SSC will get underway in the U.K. early next year before the team finally heads to Kaksken Pan, South Africa in late 2015 for the attempt--where the car can be run on a stretch of desert that's two miles wide, 12 miles long, and perfectly flat.